In the Spring the rich florescence of the conifers sheds pollen in drifts that, carried down the melting water, warn the sheep-herder and the orchardist a hundred miles away of the advancing season. A pine forest in flower is one of the things worth seeing which is most seldom seen, for at its best the high passes are still choked by snow, the lakes ice-locked, the trails dangerous. And then the blossoms, yellow and crimson tassels and rosy spathes, are carried on the leafy crowns high over the heads of the most adventurous foresters. What one finds, as late as the end of June when the trails are open, is a stain of pollen on the lingering snow, and great clouds of it flying wherever a bough is brushed by a light wing. In the autumn the whole wood is full of the click and glint of the winged seeds. Storms of them, like clouds of locusts, are carried past on the wind, to be dropped in the nearest clearing or to find a chance lodging in a moss-lined crevice of the weathered headlands. [Illustration: LAKE TAHOE, THE HIGH SIERRAS] But from the heights, all feeling for the process of the forest is lost in the sense of its irresistible march--it creeps and winds, it waits darkly for the word. Above the tree-line no sound ascends but a faint vibration, the body of sound making itself felt in the silence. On windless days the forest lies black like weed at the bottom of a lake of air as clear as a vacuum. When the great wind rivers pour about the peaks, it can be seen lashing like weed in the currents, but still almost soundlessly--the roar of it passes down the cañons, and is heard in the cities of the plain. But if the peaks cannot hear what the trees are plotting about, it is not so with the voices of the water. These are sharper, more definitive; they rise re-echoing from the rocky walls and are recognisable each by its distinctive note at incredible heights of the sheer, glassy, granite frontlets.